Dominique Swain Quotes

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

To awaken human emotion is the highest level of art.

You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story.

True artistic expression lies in conveying emotion.

To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.

I don't have to come up with a ha-ha belly laugh every day, but drawings with warmth and love or ones that put a lump in the throat. That's more important to me than a laugh.

Nothing speaks louder than an evocative photograph that stirs the imagination, tugs at the heart strings and engages the mind.

I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.

I love films, I love the way they make me feel.

If you make a record, you should ask yourself, 'Did it make someone cry, in a good way, not a bad way?' There should almost be subjective emotional criteria for evaluating work, instead of just profitability.

If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?

All art is about appealing to emotion.

I loved the idea of dramatic art of storytelling as a way to make sense of things. It's really what I love and what I care about.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

I don't think it's right to define films as commercial or art house. What's important is that a film evokes a certain emotion when it's being watched.

You are an artist when you make someone feel something deep and unexpected.

My work is immaterial. It's not painting, it's not sculpture, it's emotions. I'm giving you something to experience yourself.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any other, is: does the painter's emotions come across?

We like movies and books that give us this emotionally moving experience, where you feel like a slightly different person, and you see the world a little different after you finish. It lets you see your own life in a different way, and it actually makes you feel really good.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas. Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.

If I'm feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.

A film should be an experience. You should feel something. It should motivate you to feel something.